Chapter Seventy-Four
Dr. Andrews had pulled the desk away from the wall on the opposite side of Ember’s hospital room, which he’d covered with a sheet of that crinkly paper doctors put over exam tables. With the desk covered in unopened packages of surgical tools, rolls of gauze, a box of gloves, and sutures pre-threaded through a much larger needle than Cheyenne had bought, the man gently pressed his gloved hands against the halfling’s raw, red, torn shoulder. She gripped the edge of the chair with both hands and waited for him to start.
“You wanna tell me what put two holes like these in your shoulder?” Dr. Andrews peered at her over the rims of his glasses.
“You really want me to tell you?”
“Fair enough.” The man gently cleaned her shoulder with a sterilizing wipe, then pulled a capped syringe from the pocket of his coat. “Local anesthetic. Not sure how much it’ll—”
“You can put that thing away.” Cheyenne wrinkled her nose at the syringe and pulled away from the man just so he knew she was serious.
“You have a thing about needles, huh?”
She stared at him for a moment, then pointed at her face. “I used to have a dozen more piercings in my face. The only ‘thing’ I have about needles is that they were part of a weird phase I went through.”
The doctor pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. “Then this one will be a piece of cake.”
“Not really. Local anesthetic doesn’t work on me.”
His eyes widened again, and he glanced behind Cheyenne at Ember sitting upright in the hospital bed.
“Don’t look at me.” Ember shrugged.
“Just trying to save us some time, here, doc.” The halfling nodded at the syringe. “You’ll waste that on me, be totally baffled about why it doesn’t work, and then we’ll argue about your thoughts that maybe I just need more. By that time, you could be done with this.”
Dr. Andrews sat back in his chair just in front of her and cocked his head. “It sounds like you’ve been in this situation a time or two.”
“What, like getting surgery off the books in my best friend’s hospital room? No, this is a first. But I saw a lot of doctors when I was a kid. The anesthetic conversation gets old pretty fast.”
“I really hope those doctors weren’t looking at wounds like this when you were a kid.”
The halfling smirked. “This one’s a first, too. I fell out of a lot of trees growing up.”
Plus, we don’t need to talk about all Mom’s private physicians and what a kick they got out of Bianca Summerlin’s medical marvel of a daughter. This guy thinks I’m human.
“I see.” The doctor capped the syringe again and set it back down on the paper-covered desk. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
“Sure.” She gripped the edges of the chair again and turned her shoulder toward him. “Let’s do this.”
Neither of them said anything else while Dr. Andrews got to work. He looked up at her once in the beginning, surprised to find Cheyenne watching him poke around in her shoulder, but he kept going. She’d learned her lesson from the troll healer at Rez 38—never look away, no matter how much it hurt.
And it hurt. A lot.
After five minutes, the halfling could no longer feel the metal frame of the chair clenched in both hands. She had closed her eyes after the first warning flare of heat blooming at the base of her spine. Just think about the woods. And the deer. Don’t go all drow berserker on the guy who’s just trying to help.
When Dr. Andrews cleared his throat and leaned closer, she knew he was trying to hold something back.
“What’s going on?”
“I think I found what got stuck in here.”
“Great.” Cheyenne nodded. “Get it out.”
“You sure there weren’t any bullets involved?”
She pressed her lips together and stared at him. “I’m pretty sure a bullet wouldn’t have disappeared in my shoulder without going through it.”
“Clearly.” The doctor dabbed her shoulder with more gauze and shook his head. “This looks like shrapnel.”
“Just get it out.” She’d said it sharply enough to make both of them pause. “Please.”
“Uh-huh.”
When Dr. Andrews dug in again, Cheyenne growled and clenched the chair even tighter. A small squeak of denting metal rose from beneath her hands, which had acquired mottled splotches of her gray-purple drow skin. You know how to keep it down, so keep it down.
“Almost got it.” The man hmmmed in confusion, the tug inside Cheyenne’s shoulder sent a burst of fire racing down her arm, and then the hospital-grade tweezers rose slowly from the much bloodier hole in her flesh. A tiny square of thin silver metal was clenched in those tweezers, two bloody wires like thick hairs dangling from the bottom of it. “What the hell is this?”
“Hey, yeah.” Cheyenne waited for the man to drop his find onto the white paper covering the desk before she snatched the slippery, blood-covered tracking device. “That’s where I put this thing.”
“What?” The man stared at her as she leapt up from the chair and went toward the window for her backpack. “Now wait just a minute—”
“Thanks, doc. I owe you one.” The halfling slung her backpack over the other shoulder and shoved the tiny FRoE tracker into her pocket.
“What did I just take out of your shoulder?”
“Something that didn’t need to be there.” Leaning over the bed, Cheyenne put a hand on Ember’s shoulder. “I gotta go. Thanks for the chat.”
“Yeah, thanks for coming over.” Ember stared at her friend, on the verge of laughing, then glanced at Dr. Andrews and muttered, “I think you broke my doctor.”
The man stood beside the desk, blinking in surprise. Cheyenne just shrugged before walking around the bed again toward the door. “Call me if you need me, Em.”
“Yep.”
“You need to sit back down,” Dr. Andrews said, pointing an unconvincingly weak finger at the chair. “Let me suture those—”
“I already took up enough
